You have website. You may have built it yourself or may have hired a proffessional to do the job for you. Now that its up on the net, you would like to know how well is it doing and what are the ways to find it out.

We will start from the scratch. And we will take only google into consideration for better and easier understanding of fundamentals involved.

In Google Search Engine type your url and check how many pages of your site have been indexed. Better still, find out a "free link popularity tool" and see how many pages have been indexed by google. `Indexed' means, pages that google has taken cognizance of. When google has not yet taken a note of existence of your site or some of its pages, under such instance when you type the url in search engine the message "google has no information about this page" appears. IN the opposite situation " Google has the following information about your site" flashes. After google indexes your page or site, it keeps a constant watch on it, in terms of changes made to the page, improvements, additions etc. And after keeping a vigil and finding it upto the mark (or moving towards it), it gives a rank to the page. Google ranks all the pages of your site separately. Each page is a site fo it. So you a webmaster has to make sure that each page is well designed, tightly themed and well optimized. Page Rank these days takes anywhere between 3-4 months for an average, beginner's site. Tho there are exceptions, generally it takes time. Inexing happens in a week's time after your site ahs been launched or new page has been added. Sometimes lesser than that.

To find out the rank of your site or indvidual pages (as well as your competitor's), you need to download the Google Toolbar. The tool is simple and free to download and install. Its the most widely used tool across the net, by webmasters. A grey line indicates penalized site. Green indicates PageRank and epmty white bar is a site that is not yet ranked.

A more advanced and realistic way to find out how well is your site doing and moving up the search engine is by checking link popularity of your site. There are free tools available online which will indicate your link popularity in variuos search engines.

The more sites link to you, the better is your link popularity. The better your link popularity, the better. In terms of traffic, sales and profitabilty.

The free tools also give details of sites in your category which are doing better than you or are at the top. When you look at their statistics, you will be in a better position to judge and improve your own site. You can always go to their site and have a look at it. You may be able to find reasons which draws so much traffic to it.

In short - pages indexed by spiders or variuos search engines, is first good news. Pages ranked is second good news, and `steadily increasing' link popularity is the third and msot important good news. Best news rather. One has to constantly work on improving one's link popularity. The more sites link to you, via link exchange, apdi advertising or articles..in whichever way you get linking from highly ranked site, it works in your favor.